Thursday, 20 September 2007

Broker of ideas

Broker of ideas? I caught myself thinking about this notion and made me wonder. What pushed me into formulating such an idea? Thoughts. Agitations in my mind, triggered by words I read. The chase being more exciting than the completion of a task. The snippets of ideas that come across and the turmoil they bring about, once they enter into my mind processes. The fertile background of ideas already in, all the concepts and notions already acquired and stored into my brain.

Sequences of reverberating cell assemblies, the groups of neurons, John H. Holland talked about in his "emergence from chaos to order" book p.96-101. Laid out in a dynamic form, ever ready to respond to a nudge, due to the indefinite nature that memories are stored. The exclusive-or networks of neurons, that keep memories alive for an indefinite time, active, dynamic, till another pulse, triggered by any sort of stimulus, it finds its way into the networks' neighborhood.

The more the neural networks, the reverberated cell assemblies, amassed in the brain of an individual, the more abundant and varied the output would be, an inkling of a furtively passing, wondering thought would produce; giving, depending on the case, a variety of solutions, a rich repertoire of alternatives.

That beats the argument of many, when they attempt to discredit thinking and learning, even as being harmful to your health, or doubt the advantages of formal education. That they are taught so many useless things, an idea closely linked to the education tightly snared in vested economic interests bandwagon.

I do not think so. What you learn, enters your memory storage registers for an indefinite time to become the bed upon which later ideas will breed upon. The narrower the bed the more limited the output, any incoming idea will produce. Very few solutions and as a result stalemate. A stagnant life pattern. The broader the bed the more abundant the output an incoming idea will produce, plenty of solutions and alternatives, a versatile and adaptable personality.